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The Art of Dialogue in Public Space

019You know when something bugs you enough, you just have to give voice to it. This is one of those moments. I guess I make some pretty big judgments about public speakers based on their ability to answers questions in public forum. Often based on standards I am not sure I could meet, but so it goes. Today, I will play the critic.

Creative Commons License photo credit: MilitaryHealth

Bugs

Last fall I had a chance to see Tufte speak at his art gallery. I arrived a tad late and snuck into a chair off to the side. He took questions at the end. As he answered each question, my jaw lowered closer to the floor. I slouched down in my seat, feeling defeated. My hero! He was failing me! Later I was able to come back to an appreciation of his work, even if I don’t appreciate his ability to respond to questions. But let’s look for a minute at what triggered me to sit there aghast.

1. Asked a question about infographics for social media, Tufte basically responded that professional journalists do a good job of creating ways to understand this data. This answer completely fails to understand the nature of the medium… the publsihing by anyone should also be data-fied by anyone and not left to the old world of media.

2. Asked a question about infographics for biologists by a biologist, Tufte said that Scientific American and another magazine have great infographics by biologists. For all he knew the questioner was one of those published in said journal looking for more help! He didn’t do anything to narrow down the question to respond to the specific needs of the person asking, and thus made a vacuous circuitous answer that provided nothing of value. And it took him seven minutes of pontificating to do it.

Part of this issue is that many of us are not good at asking questions. It isn’t just Tufte being dull.

 

Fascinating

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing the totally fascinating Alain de Botton speak on his latest book, Religion for Atheists. First, let’s be clear that Alain demonstrates fabulous speaking talent. His stories are delightful, the logic of them disruptive and curious, and the pattern he uses is both refreshing and at the same time clear enough that you know that you too can repeat what he is doing with other cases you think of. The success of his talk comes from the alignment of layers of skill. He asks interesting questions that makes you see something familiar in an unexpected way. He selects stories that take you on a journey of experiencing to see for yourself. He has an emotionally engaging and comfortable presentation style that works for his presence of being. All those things we love in a compelling speaker, and more than that he can answer questions. Or things that are offered as questions but aren’t indeed questions.

People who said things during the question period at the end of the talk did one of several things that drive me totally nuts with that kind of slow-down-for-the-accident fascination…

Let’s make a list of all the fascinating car-wreck ways to “ask” questions:

  1. Minutiae. Pedantic. Make a statement adding something minor and unimportant to the topic for broad audience. Shows a profound disregard for other people’s time as well as lack of being able to discern relevance and importance. Usually publicly perceived as someone over-ambitious to be acknowledged as adding value.
  2. Evangelist. Affirm the topic of the talk and add a personal quip to it. Again, shows a lack of regard for time constraints and relevance. Usually publicly perceived as a narcissist or pawning for affection.
  3. Contrarian. Finds any random point to disagree with. I say random because the effort seems so clearly to be an attempt to spark verbal brawls and so little to do with finding deeper understanding. Whether they admit it or not, the goal seems to be to diminish the speaker. Usually publicly perceived as a bright individual with a vengeful need to upset others through their talents.
  4. Wanderer. Means well, but can’t focus their thoughts well enough to offer any clarity in their inquiry. You wonder, did they ask a question? What was it? How many parts did it have? How are those things related? Reveals disorganized thinking. Associative thinking is great for brainstorming, it isn’t appropriate in public questions responding to a prepared talk. Usually publicly perceived as a naive fool, harmless beyond the time consumed by their traveling story/statement/question.

What other characters have you seen show up?

And I can certainly think of times I have played most of these roles. It is hard to meet someone you revere and think clear enough to ask a decent question.

Alain did a brilliant job of dealing with each of these characters as they showed up to “ask” a question. For bonus points he would even answer a two part question to completion, even if answering the first part led him through a story. He was gracious and good natured. A model of elegance. If I achieve such a level of skill when I am twice his age, I will be quite happy.

 

How to Ask a QuestionThis person can dig it
Creative Commons License photo credit: quinn.anya

When I read How to Ask a Question in the Chronicle, I thought it would be useful to summarize for you here:

  1. Pick one thing you want to know – that you think others might want to know to.
  2. Check to see if you are coming from curiosity. If not, be quite until you are.
  3. Whether you agree or disagree with the points stated, does your offering to the dialogue add value and display respect?
  4. Does it feel like improv? a) does the content feel fresh or new? b) do you “yes, and” to allow the speaker ground to stand on even if you qualify a statement or clarify a concept? c) does it feel like we are here together, sharing the stage for a larger audience?
  5. As the article linked above suggests, avoid the meta-speech. I wonder if this point involves meta-speech already? Say the point, not the internal dialogue you have.
  6. If you are going to disagree or start a debate, begin by voicing respect for the speaker. Say what you like abou their perceptiveness or viewpoint, then ask about the point where your view diverges from theirs.
  7. Watch the “I am a” statements. Identity politics is obscures how different we each are. You are you, speak from that and for only yourself unless you officially represent a group.

We are here to learn from and with each other. Let’s foster a question/answer culture that promotes it.

 

ps. most of these “ask a question” points also apply to conversations and apply broadly. 😉

Asking Questions

We must be careful about asking old modernism questions of the new era. The answers do not compute. This includes things like “why isn’t there a static finite answer to questions about what makes us thrive?” or “why aren’t women successful in traditional male fields **using masculine terms of success**?”

Why can’t we answer with a finite static answer the question of how to thrive? Because the answer changes over time. The system is adaptive. And the answers have to evolve as the systems evolve. What we have learned from Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions is that even when we think we have figured things out, we haven’t. We continue to evolve how we believe the universe works. So if we **know** that the answers will evolve – in fact, when that is the most stable thing we can know, then we can embrace that evolution and stop the hubris fantasy of having come up with some finite and static answer that will be true for all time. Instead, we can embrace the answer that seems best right now and continue to seek ever more refined answers. It is the questions we can get attached to, rather than the answers we get now.

This is especially true of questions like, “what does thriving look like?” or “what does it take to thrive?” We have learned that our best efforts to address problems for society in the last 100 years may have improved things on the factors we were trying to improve (think child mortality, disease rates, poverty) but there are unintended side effects. Each effort to make the system better can result in new problems that we find just as pressing as the ones we were solving (overpopulation, for example). Thus, there is no solid or static recipe at the intervention and tactic level. Instead, we need to keep pressing on in our quest to answer how humanity can thrive without killing off the ecosystems on which it depends.

Similarly, in my research on creativity and innovation, I keep seeing the outcome of civil rights and affirmative action in terms of women and other minorities performing on masculine terms of success. It looks like a form of covering to me. For example, women are seen as achieving equal levels of creativity by achieving equal levels of awards, press mentions, etc. However, this is judging women on masculine terms, obscuring what it is even is to succeed in more feminine terms. Feminine terms of success might be better found in growth of community, number of enduring relationships, quality of relationships, network support, peer appreciation and cooperation, etc. Look for where there is cooperation rather than (or in addition to) competition.

The other crucial place I see this misguided judgment of the new by terms of the old is in leadership within generations. Older generations keep bemoaning the lack of leadership from the younger generations, when in fact it is that they can’t perceive what leadership even looks like for the younger generations.They continue to look for it as command-and-control models. And forget, the younger generations saw JFK and Martin Luther King get shot. Younger generations believe in starfish leadership by catalysts rather than spider models of top down leaders. (See starfish and spider.)

*Note I see this in my own work, as my older gen nonprofit partner in philanthropy keeps wanting me to study under a nonprofit leader and points me to old model sustainability people. It was a pleasure this week to point her to my honorable mention on the EnrichList where I am placed next to some of her own heroes. It is as if my work on thrivability since 2007 seems nearly invisible to her, because it doesn’t exist in her world the way other organizations do… the network and visibility of the work doesn’t register as significant on her measures (dollars in the org, donors, placement at old model conferences, etc.). Instead, the measures of network reach, meme spread and adoption, dispersion across multiple sectors and networks, and such measures matter most to me. Success with the term thrivability has always meant, to me, “how many people are turned on by it and shift their way of seeing and being in the world because of it” and not how much money moves through the organization or wether the old guard adopts it. It is about awakening and activating people, then trusting them to do what will lead to more of our collective thriving.

These mismatched conversations have us talking past each other, the new world inexpressible to the old. And the old world, nonsensical to the new.

Find Good Questions

Today I dropped a whole series of tweets that are part of an understanding I am working on. Each nuggets lives alone, but the whole, I hope, is greater than the parts, and thus I post it in whole here.

Hybridity. Transcend and include. Hard to see, wearing attributes of past paradigms when useful, past ideological fashion made functional.

The moonSometimes when you are inside of a thing, it is mighty tricky to pull your eyeballs out far enough to see what you are in.

Zoooooooooom way way out. Look as if an alien anthropologist at 10 years, 20, 50, 100 and see patterns, movement, fractals, direction.

Creative Commons License photo credit: thskyt

The very idea of paradigm shifts (Kuhn) begets an age where no concept is presumed static. Flow, shift, evolve. The process of becoming.

Everything as prototype (nods to @ladyniasan) Government, business, product, like software releases, always todays version open to iterate

Nature knows prototyping, she is always modifying. She doesn’t want yesterday’s world, she is making tomorrow’s by leveling up complexity.

It isn’t about truth, ideals, pure states, pure extremes. It is iteration toward what is useful. Let go of answers. Stick with Questions!

I don’t mean questions like: can this scale? or did we price this right?

I mean questions like:

  • in 5, 10, 25, 50 years, can we still operate under this purpose?
  • do my actions and choices contribute to the ecosystems that support me/us? do I or we fit in the ecosystems we are entering? And if not yet, how do we expand them to include us while encouraging the life of the whole interdependent systems to evolve?
  • how have we made room for ourselves to evolve? For what we do to evolve?
  • What Women Wanthow am I being a contribution here? how am I allowing others to be a contribution?
  • what about this creates meaning for me, for those it touches, and for future society?
  • are we having fun yet? How can we encourage play, whimsy, emotion, serendipity, and synchronicity to join us?

These are the questions. The answers are not static. The system isn’t static. The interlocking systems of systems are not static. The answers change. Find good questions and stick with them.
Creative Commons License photo credit: jronaldlee

Flash Collaboration Process

or how Thrivability: A Collabortive Sketch happened.

People have asked: How did you get that done? So, I’ll tell you.

First and foremost, I lucked out. I worked with amazing, generous, patient, inspired, and brilliant people. 70 of them. I wish I could have included more, and yet, it is too much already.

Two of my advisors suggested the project to me in December of 2009. Mid-January, I had enough of a sense of it to put out a request to my advisors for contributions. As pieces came in, I became more bold. I joke that I am a compulsive recruiter. Really, I think it is an energy high of positive feedback loops. That drove me — even more — to want to honor what people contributed and nail our March 15 launch date at SXSW.

Here are my answers to some of the specific questions I have been asked.

What worked well with your book project?

  • Using social media to create buzz, encourage participation, and share thanks
  • Being a dictator about form, process, topics to cover, and who participates
  • Hand-holding those who get writer’s block

What challenges did you face?

  • Getting 70 people to all be on their precise task in a short time period
  • Getting people to meet their deadlines (even though it was all volunteer)
  • Scope creep – the book doubled in size from original intention for it – which I think made it too big to digest whole

How did you manage so many contributors? Deadlines/workflow/editing?

  • Used a modified personal kanban – each person/topic was a post-it note on a wall indicating (by wall placement) what they had done or needed to do
  • Put deadlines 2 weeks before I really needed them, so the slips would be okay (shhhh, keep that secret!)
  • Put everything into a google doc as it came in.
  • Didn’t let them edit each other’s pieces (although I did share samples of existing contributions to new contributors to give them a feel for what was there)
  • Note: I have been an editor for 15 years or so. I am used to the process of idea->draft->edit->revise->final->design->publish. I edited each as they came in. I brought in help for second/third pair of eyes. Only a few had major re-writes and a few went way over the 500 word limit.

How, if at all, did you incentivise contributions (and also people working to deadlines)?

  • Seeded it for momentum. The first contribution came in 2 hours after I asked the initial group (my ring of a dozen advisors). I tweeted my thanks.
    People were motivated, I think, by:

    • Social relationships (they all know me or someone else involved)
    • Uplifting concept (mission is bigger than me or you and aspirational)
    • Peer influence (who else had or was going to contribute)
    • It is possible people thought that being in the book would help with their visibility, but I think that wasn’t a real motivator (in hindsight).
    • People were asked to speak to something they know super well and feel “alive” about, so I suspect/hope they felt it was an “opportunity” to give voice to something vital in themselves.
  • Made it easy to be involved – just get me your 500 or less words. I will do the rest.
  • Made it clear what needed to happen and by when. There were no “ifs, ands, or buts” about it. No threats. No complaints. And an open door for anyone struggling with it.

What advice would you give to anyone thinking of crowdsourcing a book about sustainability?

  • If it is an ebook – keep it SHORT
  • Be firm in your structure and allow people to be creative and alive in the container you provide
  • Ask for small contributions that seem easy to achieve
  • Stick to a short window from request – draft – response – final – design – approval to publication
  • Don’t over-explain the process. What is the least they need to know about what is happening behind the scenes?
  • Consider how you want to manage copyright (we have a copyright on the collection – with each individual holding copyright on their specific piece)
  • Think of it as curation – you are creating a larger work by placing individual works in relation to each other, just as one would with an art exhibit of many artists. There is a grace to making that work well and be cohesive as a whole. (That would be a whole other conversation here)
  • Get multiple opinions on your draft and final draft so that you can find out if that piece that doesn’t strike your fancy is super compelling to someone else (and vice versa). Be careful not to let that feedback overly homogenize things – squeezing the voice and authenticity out of it
It is easy for a collectively written piece to:
    • Get diluted by having too many editors or an unclear vision/purpose
    • Seem like a random hodge podge (be sure to create cohesion through form/argument/story or something!)
    • Have an inconsistent standard or threshold of quality (especially when people volunteer, it is easy to simply be grateful for whatever they offer – but don’t. If they want to be involved, they want it to be good. So handhold folks if you have to – until it meets a high standard.)

How will you solve those challenges?

What questions do you still have? And what answers do you have for collaborations you have worked on?